ABSTRACT
Michael Sendivogius (1566–1636) was born near Cracow and educated at the universities of Leipzig and Vienna. By 1594 he had entered the service of both Emperor Rudolf II and the Polish King Sigismund III. In his official capacities as imperial emissary and royal secretary—and as Rudolf’s confidant and fellow-alchemist—he met many prominent political and scientific figures; he numbered among his friends the alchemists Oswald Croll, Martin Ruland, and Michael Maier. Although he did have a remote connection with John Dee’s companion, the notorious Edward Kelley (he purchased an estate near Prague from Kelley’s widow in 1597), Sendivogius’ reputed exploits with the Scottish alchemist Alexander Seton (whom he supposedly helped escape from prison so as to recover his transmutative powder) are now considered a fiction. 1 Sendivogius’ documented life was not without its scrapes, however. In 1599 the Prague municipal court found him responsible for the death of a Bohemian merchant and alchemist, Louis Koralek, and he was able to avoid imprisonment only after King Sigismund intervened. And in 1605, having claimed in print that he knew the secret of alchemy, he was detained in Stuttgart by Duke Frederick of Württemberg; once again, only diplomatic pressure could secure his release (the embarrassed Frederick had to place the blame for Sendivogius’ detention on his own hapless court alchemist, one Heinrich Mühlenfels, who was sent to the gallows). Some of Sendivogius’ troubles may have resulted from his operation as a kind of double agent. In any case, his career as a courtier and scientific adviser continued, in Poland and then (around 1619) in Germany, when he transferred his allegiance to Emperor Ferdinand II. For the Polish king he established many iron and brass foundries and other metal-works; for Ferdinand he set up lead foundries in Silesia. In 1626 he was appointed the latter’s privy councillor, and in 1631 he was rewarded for long service with estates in Moravia, where he died in 1636.
